Logan

It’s still unclear if the massive commercial success of Deadpool (2016) will usher in a wave of R-rated comic book superhero movies but it has given us Logan (2017), the third (and supposedly final) movie focused on the titular character (a.k.a. Wolverine), played by Hugh Jackman, the popular mutant from the X-Men franchise. Fans of the violent antihero had been frustrated with how the character had been depicted in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and The Wolverine (2013), as they were watered-down adaptations that, at best, were sporadically faithful to the source material.

As a result, anticipation was high when it was announced that Logan would not only draw inspiration from the Old Man Logan graphic novel by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, but it would be decidedly darker in tone, graphically violent and delve deeper into the character than previous installments with some comparing it favorably to the Clint Eastwood revisionist western Unforgiven (1992).

Director James Mangold sets the tone right from the start when a bunch of gang-bangers attempt to steal the hubcaps from the limousine Logan drives. He’s not as fast as he used to be but still as deadly with his adamantium claws as the hapless would-be car thieves find out the hard way in a sequence that features blood, cursing and severed limbs as Logan hacks and slashes his way through the assailants.

Logan is much older than we’ve seen him before and the world is largely absent of mutants. He lives under the radar, driving a limo to make ends meet. He lives in Mexico where he takes care of an enfeebled Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who suffers debilitating seizures and has to be given drugs to keep his mental powers in check. These initial scenes between Charles and Logan carry a dramatic weight as we see what tragic figures both men have become. They are no longer heroes and are living day-to-day on the margins of society, numbing the pain with alcohol and drugs. It is a shock to see Charles so weak and helpless and Logan so bitter and beaten down by life, tormented by his past.

He wants to avoid trouble and be left alone but, of course, trouble finds him in the form of a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) who has mutant powers uncannily like Logan. She is being pursued by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the leader of a militant group of cyborgs known as Reavers. What makes her so significant is that a new mutant hasn’t been born in 25 years. Her guardian hires Logan to take her and Laura to North Dakota for $50,000, which will allow him to fulfill his desire to buy a boat and live on the sea.

The action sequence that reveals Laura’s powers is a bravura one as we see this little girl slice and dice her way through a heavily armed group of mercenaries with a little help from Logan. She has the quick and deadly moves that Logan used to have and this sequence shows them off quite effectively with brutally efficient economy by Mangold.

Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine in various movies for 17 years and this is his best performance as the character with the actor finally given a meaty screenplay (courtesy of Scott Frank) to sink his teeth into. The Logan of this movie is a broken man that doesn’t care much about anything or anyone. The actor also looks the part with his graying hair and full beard. It is the little touches, however, like the way Logan walks with a limp or has to use reading glasses that show the gradual ravages of time that have taken their toll on him.

Patrick Stewart matches him scene for scene as an old man that can no longer control his powers and has to be given a strict regime of drugs to keep them in check. He and Logan bicker like an old married couple as they argue about what to do with Laura. The two actors play well off each other – something that comes from making several movies together – and there is something touching about seeing how Logan cares for Charles. They share poignant moments that ground the movie and give it an emotional weight that was lacking from previous Wolverine movies. We actually care about what happens to these characters because over the course of the movie we’ve become invested in their struggle.

More than any other X-Men movie, Logan tries to go deeper and examine what motivates these characters. It goes beyond the usual mutants are different and discriminated against because of their otherness tropes that we’ve seen many times already. The movie presents a world where mutants are created and experimented on like lab rats only they’re being manufactured as living weapons. It’s this brave new world that clashes with Logan’s old school ways.

Comic book superhero movies are often criticized for being too superficial – sacrificing things like character development in favor of spectacle. Logan maintains a balance of both better than most. It is refreshing to see a superhero movie where the protagonist doesn’t have to save the world. This movie’s scale is much more modest, more intimate. Perhaps the weightiest theme it wrestles with is that of mortality. Wolverine is no longer the nearly invincible fighter we’ve seen in previous movies. He’s a burnt-out shell of a man painfully aware of his limited time left on earth. The dilemma he faces is what does he do with the time he has left? He’s not searching for a purpose in life – it finds him in the form of Laura. He is tired of fighting and the toll it has taken on his body. He just wants it to end and Logan gives him that closure. It’s not the Unforgiven of superhero movies – Logan really doesn’t change all that much – but it’s damn near close.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

With X-Men (2000), Bryan Singer helped revitalize the comic book superhero movie after Batman and Robin (1997) turned off mainstream audiences and Hollywood studios alike from the genre. It proved that people would go see this kind of movie if it were well-made. While X-Men, based on the Marvel comic book of the same name about a team of mutated human beings born with their own unique super powers, had its flaws, it showed promise, which Singer capitalized on with its vastly superior sequel X2 (2003). After its impressive commercial and critical success, 20th Century Fox naturally wanted him to direct another one, but he decided to jump ship to the DC Universe and make the ill-fated Superman Returns (2006). The X-Men franchise continued on without him until the prequel First Class (2011) (which he helped produce) convinced him to direct another one (that, and I’m sure the financial flop of Jack the Giant Slayer). Loosely based on the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline of the same name by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Days of Future Past (2014) ambitiously features cast members from all four previous X-Men movies.

In an alternate future, the world has been ravaged by a destructive war between humans and mutants. Giant robots known as Sentinels have driven the mutants underground and to the brink of extinction, forcing them to band together, even Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen), who have a wildly disparate worldviews. Singer effectively sets up this bleak futureworld with an exciting action sequence that sees a group of Sentinels kill off several mutants with brutal efficiency.

Professor X and Magneto devise a desperate plan to prevent their future by stopping the Sentinels from being created. To do this, they decide to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973 to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), designer of the Sentinels, which kickstarts the creation of said robots. It won’t be easy as Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) are at bitter odds with each other. Mystique, once an ally of the former, now sides with the latter. Wolverine must bring Professor X and Magneto together and convince them to stop Mystique from killing Trask.

Singer manages to successfully wrangle a large and diverse cast of characters without confusing the audience or overwhelming them. Hugh Jackman returns yet again as Wolverine and plays him as a slightly calmer guy who must maintain focus and keep his berserker rage in check in order to stay long enough in the past to complete his mission. James McAvoy is good as a self-pitying burn-out who has lost his direction life. Professor X takes drugs to keep his powers submerged and has to find something to care about again. Michael Fassbender does a nice job of incorporating elements of Ian McKellen’s Magneto yet still make the character his own. The scenes he has with McAvoy are infused with tension as the two men’s opposing worldviews clash. They must find some kind of common ground, some kind of reconciliation if only temporarily.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Mystique as a ruthlessly driven mutant fighting a war that was started by Magneto, but one that she continues in his absence because she is tired of seeing her kind tortured and killed out of fear and intolerance. Peter Dinklage is quite good as Trask, a man who believes that mutants will make humanity extinct and has the conviction of someone who thinks he’s right. Like any formidable villain, he doesn’t see himself as such, believing he is completely justified in what he does. Singer’s presence clearly inspired everyone to bring their A-game and there is nary a bum note among the cast. He wisely knows exactly when to bring certain characters center stage for their chance to shine in a way that feels satisfying. A minor quibble is that with the exception of Jackman, most of the original cast are given glorified cameos with an emphasis on the First Class characters.

This is easily the most ambitious X-Men movie to date as it goes back and forth in time and spans several countries while juggling a sizable cast of characters. It is great to see Singer back at the helm as he brings a stylish pizazz that was missing from The Last Stand (2006) as evident with a slick, amusing sequence where Wolverine, Professor X, the Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) break Magneto out of the Pentagon all scored to Jim Croce’s 1973 hit “Time in a Bottle.” It’s a virtuoso sequence that showcases Evan Peters’ scene-stealing turn as a lightning fast mutant and gives the movie a much-needed dose of levity amidst the prevailing serious tone.

In many respects, Days of Future Past thankfully pretends that The Last Stand never happened (touching upon it only briefly) and feels like not only the logical conclusion of First Class, but also X2. Simon Kinberg’s screenplay does a nice job of showing how the mutants’ exploits affect history and in turn how it affects them. It also manages to successfully raise the stakes on an epic scale from any previous X-Men movie while keeping us invested by showing the personal dilemmas that several key characters face, from Professor X learning to control his powers to Mystique learning to be more tolerant of the human race. Singer expertly orchestrates the various story elements, guiding the movie to an impressively staged climax in both future and past timelines that provides the requisite show-stopping CGI workout, but one that feels deserved and never excessive (unlike, say Man of Steel). He has made what is easily the best X-Men movie since X2 and maybe even better than that one.

DVD of the Week: Australia

After his debut film Strictly Ballroom (1992), writer/director Baz Luhrmann never looked back, creating lavish, ultra-stylish musicals William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), and let’s not forget that $5 million Chanel commercial starring his cinematic muse, Nicole Kidman. With his latest film, Australia (2008), he decided to take national pride to a whole new level by creating a sweeping romantic epic about his home country that takes place between the World Wars and was made by and starring Australians. With a budget in the neighborhood of $130 million, the pressure was on Luhrmann now more than ever before to deliver at the box office and, while underperforming in North America, it has gone on to gross $200 million worldwide despite a lukewarm critical response.

Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) is a headstrong English aristocrat who travels to Northern Australia in 1939 to meet her husband at their ranch Faraway Downs. Within a few minutes of arriving, she meets her guide to this strange new land, a man known as the Drover (Hugh Jackman), a hard-drinking, two-fisted Australian version of a cowboy. They take an instant dislike to each other: she thinks that he’s crude and uncultured and he thinks that she’s too prim and proper.

They arrive at Faraway Downs to find her husband dead (apparently at the hands of an Aboriginal) and the ranch in disarray and in danger of being foreclosed. Mr. Carney (Bryan Brown), the local tycoon with a monopoly on the local economy, has his right-hand man, Mr. Fletcher (David Wenham) try to sabotage Lady Ashley. In order to save Faraway Downs, she has to drive 1,500 head of cattle to Darwin and so she enlists the help of the Drover. Along the way, they befriend a young Aboriginal boy named Nullah (Brandon Walters) whom she protects from being taken away and forced to assimilate with white folks.

As with his previous films, Luhrmann populates Australia with broad, stereotypical characters and tells a classic story. The film revels in archetypes: Ashley is a pure, upstanding woman, the Drover is the rugged western hero, Fletcher is the dastardly villain, and Nullah is the adorable child who narrates the story. As he proved with is previous films, Luhrmann has an uncanny knack for casting. Who can forget the undeniable chemistry between Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo + Juliet and the sparks that flew between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!? He’s at it again with this new film with the casting of Hugh Jackman and Kidman as the romantic leads.

Jackman finally fulfills those early comparisons to Clint Eastwood as he plays the Drover as a tough, dependable hero who’s not afraid to show his vulnerable side. He’s never been more charismatic as he proves to be equally adept at the physical demands and the emotional range that the role requires. No one knows how to photograph Kidman quite like Luhrmann. She looks stunning, even covered in a layer of dirt and dust from a cattle drive. At first, her stuffy English aristocrat comes off as a cartoonish stereotype but as her character becomes acclimatized to the country and she develops a bond with Nullah, she becomes warmer and more empathetic.

Beginning in 1939 and climaxing with the Japanese bombing of Darwin in 1942, Luhrmann’s Australia mixes the larger-than-life melodrama of Gone with the Wind (1939) with the exciting cattle drive in Red River (1948) and with a dash of The Wizard of Oz (1939). His film clearly harkens back to the kind of cinema that they just don’t make anymore with very little CGI used and everything built from scratch and on location. Australia is the kind of ambitious Technicolor epic that might have been made by John Ford or George Stevens. It is a marvel of absolutely stunning cinematography – only Luhrmann could make the desolate outback look vibrant and alive. He alternates between sun-drenched day scenes and night scenes that appear to be impossibly illuminated by the stars.

One should not go into Australia expecting realism. Luhrmann presents a mythologized take on his country. Love him or hate him, you have to respect Luhrmann for not being afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. He’s arguably the most romantic filmmaker working today with the possible exception of Wong Kar-Wai. And with Australia, he has made an unabashed love letter to his homeland on a grand scale.

Special Features:

Not much – two deleted scenes. One features the Drover convincing Ashley to stay after her husband dies and another featuring an angry staff serving Ashley dinner. Luhrmann has said in interviews that he’s planning a special edition DVD later this year making this version strictly a rental.